The Beehive Mind
by Lettered
Summary: In the aftermath of Alkali, Logan & Scott duke it out. Logan & Scott friendship not slash. Deals with their relationship to Jean, with a hint of LM.


"There isn't any smoking in here," Scott said mildly, taking aim at a flying disk and destroying it with technical, deadly precision.

"Like fuck there ain't. You tellin' me I came in the wrong room?" Logan replied, cigar still between his teeth and thumb hooked nonchalantly against his belt.

"What?"

"Thought this was the Danger Room. Damn dumb name if you ask me, but at least it ain't the Pussy-wipe Room."

Scott didn't spare Logan a glance as three more blasts from his visor hit four discs mid air. "No one was asking you. Put it out. Now."

Logan raised a brow. "Whatcha gonna do if I don't?"

Scott paused and suddenly turned to him, lips pursed and considering. "I am the team leader, you'll remember. I can revoke your Danger Room privileges for misbehavior."

Logan snorted. "You can revoke my ass, Scooter. You think I actually give a damn 'bout your permission?"

Scott's lips pressed together tighter and Logan realized with a sudden narrowing of his eyes that he was being laughed at. By freakin' _Scooter._"I have a proposition for you. Either you put that out," Scott continued pointedly, and Logan began to smirk. The geek was actually about to threaten him. "Or you give me one and a light and we'll call it even.

The smirk fell away from Logan's face. "Well shit," he announced solemnly, chewing on the end of his cigar. "Did you seriously just ask me for a smoke, Scooter?"

Scott cocked his head and regarded Logan blandly. "I don't believe I was asking. I was telling. You can consider it an order, if you'd like," he offered calmly.

Logan chuckled and inhaled deeply, then let loose a ring of smoke right into Scott's face. Scott appeared completely unfazed by it. "And what happens if I disobey?"

Scott shrugged. "Then I suppose we have a problem on our hands."

"Good," Logan replied, removing the stub of the cigar from his mouth. "Because I'm tired of fuckin' negotiatin'." He looked around and finally reached into his pocket for the metal cigar case. He placed the stub on top and onto a table in the corner, the only furniture in the room. The rest was mats and machines. "How 'bout our problem lasts 'til this burns out?"

Scott shrugged again. "Fine by me."

"Good," Logan said again, and took off his jacket, then the shirt on top, until he was left only with the tank. He cracked his neck and whipped his head around as he heard Scooter snort. "What the fuck's funny?"

"Show off," Scott said succinctly, arms crossed over his chest and a smirk playing about his lips.

"Wuss." Logan scowled. "At least I got somethin' ta show insteada some scrawny ugly ass like yours. What the hell they been feedin' ya, anyway?"

Scott remained immobile, smirk still steadily lurking at the corners of his mouth. "Just because I don't eat raw cow doesn't mean I can't match you," he replied smoothly.

"Whatever, Slim. All meat should look red ta you."

"It does." Scott's eloquent brows raised. "I thought you were tired of talking?"

"I am," Logan replied, and lunged forward. Scott skidded to the side and landed a fist on Logan's jaw. Logan blinked, half-stepped back, lunged forward, and sank his fist into Scott's stomach. It was unfair, really. Scott was obviously faster, used to bringing someone down by light works of his dancing, untouchable fists until the opponent got tired—but Logan could go on forever. In the end, they both knew who would win.

Still, Logan hadn't had a good fight in what seemed like too long, and it'd been even longer for Scott. And this did promise to be a good fight.

Scott might have been slotted for defeat, but it didn't shake his precision or determination. He narrowed his focus down to the physicality of it, and it was the tightening of control on his body that allowed other controls to loosen. He could be angry, feel rage, fight the fight he had been fighting against himself for so long now using someone else's flesh.

It felt good to let go an inch, to sweat, to feel his fist sink into someone else's belly. He let himself pretend that this man facing him was his enemy, and Scott had not let himself look at his enemies, even in nightmares. He hated them, hated them all. He also knew, deep down, that he hated them too much. He never felt anything so deeply except his love for Jean, and allowing himself to feel that much was dangerous. Even Jean had been dangerous. In his love for her he had seen himself losing control. In losing her, he feared it ten times more.

But sometimes, in moving across the sparring mat and reveling in the simple feel of muscles sliding over each other and into each other as chests met fists and knees rammed into stomachs, Logan was not his enemy, but just Logan. Logan, who'd dared to look at Jean in ways Scott had only ever wanted himself to look at her; Logan, who'd made her look back in a way he'd thought only reserved for him. Logan, who had had to tell him that she had remained faithful to him, as if he had ever had any doubt.

Most of the time, Scott had been able to convince himself that he never felt so threatened by Logan as anyone supposed. And to an extent, his slightly sulky amusement at Logan's behavior wasn't feigned; Logan acted like a petulant bully and Scott often regarded it with a simple, condescending humor. That's not to say the big swaggering bully didn't annoy the hell out of him from time to time.

Not to say, either, that he couldn't help but resent sometimes that this hulking brute had come here and changed everything—brought danger, yes, but also the ability to play on Scott's doubts and fears in a way that secretly enraged him. He would never have admitted it, but on a certain level he enjoyed that it was Logan he was elbowing in the stomach just now and half-throwing over his shoulder with a strength he hadn't been challenged to use in a long time.

Scott knew, too, that Logan knew this. Logan knew Scott was taking out all forms of rage on him in every different shape and size—and Logan wanted it. It made things simpler, to see Scott in a rage, to have him lash out at him. He would never have admitted it, but the other option—keeping it all inside, and smiling, too—was something Logan didn't understand. Sure, Logan had secrets, and he sure as hell never had and never would have sob-fests with anyone while discussing anything so pussy as 'feelings'. But when he was unhappy, when he was annoyed, when he was just plain in a shitty mood—which was, you guessed it, pretty much all the time—he showed it.

Scott simply . . . absorbed it. It pissed Logan off, the extent to which that confused him. He hated not knowing what was going on, not being in control. He liked his dealings with people to be straight—which was why, when he was in a rage, he let people know it in no uncertain terms. He didn't like that there could be that much pain in a person without him giving an inch. Maybe he thought he had the monopoly on a rage and grief so deep it couldn't be expressed.

He wondered, sometimes, how Jean could possibly have withstood it. There was too much emotion in this place; even _he _could feel it. How could she have withstood her own goddam fucking lover, when the latter had emotions so strong sometimes even the professor winced against his psychic walls? Didn't matter how well Scott controlled it, Logan told himself he hadn't known a man could feel that much. Didn't know they went down that far. Was afraid to look at himself, fearing just how deep he himself went. Afraid to see desire for a thing too good to touch—and guilt, for a thing he shouldn't have touched and hadn't, in the end, deserved, as much as he'd wanted her.

They'd taken that away too—the ability to feel nothing—Stryker and all his little bastards. They'd taken it all away and given him guilt instead. He'd never had that before. Never had to feel guilty, no matter what he did, because he'd had that completely liberating ability to just not _care_. Somewhere along the way it had gotten lost. And he wanted it back. This, too, was part of the fuel of his fight as he laid into Scott. He, too, was not only fighting the man before him but a legion of private demons.

He'd cared for Jean. He'd wanted to feel her long legs wrapped around him, wanted to feel that strength in her thighs, wanted to feel her melt between her legs and wanted to make fire sweat for him, wanted to smell her and wanted to truly come home inside of her. It hadn't been as it had for so long with other women. He didn't only want that from her—he also wanted the chance to ask about her, to worry about her, to care for her, to protect her, to provide for her—to make her depend on him, make her need him. He wanted her to make him real; he knew she could because _she_ was real and she would want him because of that.

But the truth of it all was that he'd never done these things. He'd never gotten to be the one to kiss her good-bye and tell her to be safe; he'd never gotten to be the one to hold her when she was hurt; he'd never even gotten to be the one to demand that she be saved even after she'd already been lost. And as much as he'd wanted to do all these things, he hadn't, and he was less connected to her and she meant less to him than she ever could to Scott Summers. The guilt of that, that she'd chosen Scott long before Logan had ever come to his own choices—how blind he'd been to the depth of feeling between them—it was all there was left of Jean and that choice Logan had made.

Logan tried to stand it, if only for the sake of another choice he had made, long before Jean Gray. He'd made _that _choice the second he'd shifted the damn truck into park and waited as she'd gotten the picture and opened up the truck door, smooth clear face looking inside, big eyes looking about as damn young as possible. He was fooling himself if he chose to believed _Jean _was what made him want to throw down that tag and start over, instead of always looking back. Jean was just the shape that choice had taken.

There'd been another time he'd left the tag behind.

Marie was a bundle of firsts. She was the first person he'd given a fuck for in a long time. She was the first one to care back in perhaps forever. She was the one who trusted him. The one he got to protect. She was the one that was his. She had a boyfriend and she had her friends and she had the professor, and all that was very fine with him. He was not about to own her. He was, however, about to make it clear to anyone in his way that he was always going to be there for her, like it or not. In the background, maybe. Not intruding too much. But there was something between them that was still his—completely and emphatically his, and he was going to be there for her if she needed him—and he told himself that over and over and over again, that this was what held him here.

This was why he had to stay, despite every instinct telling him to hunt down every last mother fucker in any way responsible for Jean's death and his own personal grudge, despite every instinct telling him to run far away, from choices and guilt and broken promises and Scott Summers' monumental control, beneath which the man just went down too far.

He fought that, fought thoughts about a girl whose innocence scared him, fought the fucks who had made him who he was, fought everything. For Scott, it was the same, even if his enemies were different. Both of them knew what they were doing, and both of them needed it.

They needed it in the same way they needed the ineloquent verbal sparring that was the inevitable result of the two of them being in the same room. That scared some of the students. Their eyes widened and they trembled at the nerve of some of the things Logan dared to say to their most respected leader—Logan was blunt; he was crude; he was even cruel at times. He talked about Jean, and it wasn't in the hushed, respectful tones people used to speak of the dead, but the same bawdy, harsh way he spoke of almost everyone.

He'd even mentioned, just in Scott's hearing, that she must have been an extremely good fuck, with legs that long and hair that red, and Scott had simply lifted his head, lips quirking slightly, and said yes. She had been. His voice had been calm and Logan had jabbed him about how shitty he was looking, and just because she was dead didn't mean he shouldn't bother with what he looked like, or did he really _try_ to look that shitty? For once, Jubilee had been speechless. And it wasn't until thirty minutes later, long after Logan had left off, that Scott had stood and left the room in a steady, measured step.

Tactless—and utterly merciless—that was the ass hole that was Logan. Scott was silently thankful. He hated being treated as if he was fragile—an empty glass that might break. He would not lose control. He had finished with that. It had been weeks, now, since Jean's death. Everyone else's pity made it feel like yesterday. Logan's caustic crudity almost made it feel like years ago, for the space of a few, serene moments. He knew that Logan knew that too, and let him have that peace of mind.

Scott almost had him, a knee to either side of his hips, pinning him down and sitting on him to lay each fist more forcefully into either side of his chest. He faltered for the barest moment, and Logan uppercut him and then laid him out right in the stomach, making Scott choke as the bigger man pressed the weight of a knee into Scott's chest.

Even Logan was panting, his shirt soaked with saltiness and even a little blood. Scott looked up at the growling, feral, blood-thirsty face inches from his own and said simply, "Time."

Logan glanced up at the cigar, which was now only ash. "Shit." He rolled off of Scott and lay there for a minute, closing his eyes. Scott wearily sat up, and then, wavering slightly, stood, favoring one ankle and wiping blood from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. Logan cracked an eye open. "Better put ice on that. Don't wanna muck up that ugly muga yours."

Despite the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, Scott quirked a sardonic brow. "Did you just say I was pretty?"

"Oh yeah," Logan muttered sarcastically. "Fuckin' gorgeous. The first Miss America with a dick."

"Good to know," Scott replied affably, and turned on his good heel to leave.

Logan groaned and sat up wearily as Scott left the room. That was one helluva fight. The bruises and cuts—and a broken rib?—were already gone, but it still hurt like hell. Felt pretty fuckin' good was what it felt. Who'd have guessed ol' Slim could really pack a punch?

It felt good, too, to have Summers actually hurt him. Pain was a always a remedy for guilt. Felt like he was being punished in some way for that kiss and perhaps a shadow of a doubt he'd pulled Jeannie into. He was all for free will; titles—girlfriend, fiancé, wife—hell, they didn't matter if your instincts were telling you to do something else. But Jean—Logan had chosen her without really considering the choices she'd made; he'd gone after her because he'd wanted her from the first moment he saw her and the Wolverine generally got what he wanted. But it didn't work like that, he'd realized. Things weren't simple; life wasn't a free-for-all fist-fight, and Logan desperately wanted it to be. At least finally duking it out with Summers took off some of the edge.

The door clicked and Logan looked up, surprised to see Scott back—holding liquor and glasses. "Breakfast of champions," Logan groaned, laying back down and covering his eyes with his arms.

Scott sat down a yard or two away and poured out two glasses. "Breakfast?"

"Slim," Logan replied wearily, lifting his arm to look at Scott, who was already tossing back the first one. "You got any idea it's only nine-thirty in the fuckin' mornin'?"

Scott's lips turned down carelessly. "Nah," he murmured, and laid back too, holding the glass on his chest. "I thought it was later."

Logan grunted. "Losin' tracka time." He paused, and lifted a brow. "Can't sleep?"

Scott ignored Logan's question. "As I recall," Scott languidly replied instead, "you owe me a cigar."

Logan scowled and sat up, grabbing the bottle to pour himself a glass. "Who the fuck says you won?" he demanded, snorting. "Losers always provide the drinks," he announced, and tipped the glass back.

Scott chuckled weakly up at the ceiling, a tired, yet satisfied sound. He turned to look at Logan with a smirk, glass still balanced on his chest. "Take a closer look at the bottle, genius."

Logan growled and looked at the bottle. It was just Jack Daniels. Just _his _Jack Daniels, he realized—the one that'd disappeared several weeks ago after he'd stocked himself up and slung back a few with the new blue guy. "Slim, you sly prick," Logan grunted, and fell back to lay down once more on the mat.

"I warned you," Scott said laconically, closing his eyes. He took his visor off, and rubbed his temples. After a moment Logan stood and found his jacket, digging through the pockets. He pulled out a cigar and put it in his mouth, and pulled out another one to throw in the general direction of Scott's chest. Scott caught it with a lazy hand, not bothering to turn his head. Logan lit up, scowling as Scott drew the length of the cigar under his nose. "It's a good one," Logan snapped. "Don't fuckin' waste it." He tossed the lighter over too.

Scott chuckled again and lifted his head off the ground a moment to bring the cigar in his mouth closer to the flame of the lighter. He was amazingly adept, without sight. Logan sat next to the whiskey and poured himself another glass. This was certainly the life. Blood, sweat, whiskey, cigars. No fucking talking. Scott exhaled. "Hey Logan?" Scott said, not bothering to turn his head. "Thanks."

They both knew he wasn't talking about the blood, sweat, whiskey or cigars.

* * *

A/N: Okay, if you care to listen, here's the low down: this little one-shot ficlet has been written for about a year. It was supposed to be part of a larger fic, which I've been working on off an on. For the most part, the (larger) fic deals with Scott, Logan, and Kurt, their friendship, and the women we all know belong to them (Jean, Rogue, and 'Ro, naturally—though Jean has her Phoenix issues and Rogue has her Pyro and Bobby issues ;o) Oh, and it also introduces Dr. Hank McCoy, who I just love. Oh, and in case I'm scaring you, it also actually has a plot—mostly dealing with Legacy and the Mutant Registration Act /happy sigh/). However, I may never get around to finishing that fic, and I wanted to post at least SOME part of it before I give up altogether. Thanks for reading and don't forget how that little purple "GO!" button is calling you (Shirley. Calling you Shirley). Okay never mind.


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